tingling.
"I have to go," he said at last, getting to his feet. "I shouldn't even be here, but I
cannot keep myself away from you. I worry about you in every waking moment. I love
you, Luce. So much it hurts."
She closed her eyes against the beat of his wings and the sting of the sand he
raised in his wake.
107
TEN
NINE DAYS
An echoing series of whooshes and clangs cut through the song of ospreys. A
long, singing note of metal scraping metal, then the clash of the thin silver blade glancing
off its opponent's guard.
Francesca and Steven were fighting.
Well, no--they were fencing. A demonstration for the students who were about to
stage matches of their own.
"Knowing how to wield a sword--whether it's the light foils we're using today, or
something as dangerous as a cutlass--is an invaluable skill," Steven said, slicing the point
of his sword through the air in short, whiplike movements. "The armies of Heaven and
Hell rarely engage in battle, but when they do"--without looking, he snapped his blade
sideways toward Francesca, and without looking, she brought her sword up and parried
the blow--"they remain untouched by modern warfare. Daggers, bows and bolts, giant
flaming swords, these are our eternal tools."
The duel that followed was for show, merely a lesson; Francesca and Steven
weren't even wearing masks.
It was late in the morning on Wednesday, and Luce was seated on the deck's wide
bench between Jasmine and Miles. The entire class, including their two teachers, had
changed out of their regular clothes into the white outfits fencers always wore. Half the
class held black mesh face masks in their hands. Luce had arrived at the supply closet just
after the last face mask had been snagged, which hadn't bothered her at all. She was
hoping to avoid the embarrassment of having the entire class witness her cluelessness: It
was obvious from the way the others were making lunges at the sides of the deck that
they had been through these practices before.
"The idea is to present as small a target for your opponent as possible," Francesca
explained to the circle of students surrounding her. "So you set your weight on one foot
and lead with your sword foot, and then rock back and forth--into striking range and then
away."
She and Steven were suddenly engaged in a rush of jabs and parries, making a
dense clatter as they expertly fought off each other's blows. When her blade glanced wide
to the left, he lunged forward, but she rocked back, sweeping her sword up and around
and onto his wrist. " Touche, " she said, laughing.
Steven turned to the class. " Touche, of course, is French for 'touched.' In fencing,
we count points by touches."
"Were we fighting for real," Francesca said, "I'm afraid that Steven's hand would
be lying bloody on the deck. Sorry, darling."
"Quite all right," he said. "Quite. All. Right." He threw himself sideways at her,
108
almost seeming to rise off the ground. In the frenzy that followed, Luce lost track of
Steven's sword as it crisscrossed through the air again and again, nearly slicing into
Francesca, who ducked sideways just in time and resurfaced behind him.
But he was ready for her and knocked her blade away before dropping the point
of his and striking out at her instep.
"I'm afraid you, my dear, have gotten off on the wrong foot."
"We'll see." Francesca raised a hand and smoothed her hair, the two of them
staring at each other with murderous intensity.
Each new round of violent play caused Luce to tense up in alarm. She was used to
being jittery, but the rest of the class was also surprisingly jittery today. Jittery with
excitement. Watching Francesca and Steven, not one of them could keep still.
Until today, she'd wondered why none of the other Nephilim played on any of
Shoreline's varsity sports teams. Jasmine had scrunched up her nose when Luce asked
whether she and Dawn were interested in swim team tryouts in the gym. In fact, until
she'd overheard Lilith in the locker room this morning yawning that every sport except
fencing was "exquisitely boring," Luce had figured the Nephilim just weren't athletic. But
that wasn't it at all. They just chose carefully what to play.
Luce winced as she imagined Lilith, who knew the French translation for all the
fencing terms Luce didn't even know in English, throwing her svelte, spiteful self into an
attack. If the rest of the class were one-tenth as skilled as Francesca and Steven, Luce was
going to end up a pile of body parts by the end of the session.
Her teachers were obvious experts, stepping lithely in and out of lunges. Sunlight
glinted off their swords, off their white padded vests. Francesca's thick blond waves